Legislative Priorities

Through Golden State’s Legislative Committee, the cooperatives collaborate to preserve our unified position that Electric Cooperatives are a distinct type of electricity provider that can, and should, merit separate treatment from other utility types in California. Retaining this autonomy to make decisions at the local level is essential to the electric cooperative business model.

One of the main reasons why our history (link is external) and the Federal REA program. Additionally, we are non-profit utilities that are governed by a board of our member-owners. We are also very rural in nature, typically with less than 6 customers for every mile of power line.

Our service territories were not consumed by investor-owned utilities due to the high cost of rural service that were not attractive to profit-driven utilities. Also, income levels of our membership are typically lower than the rest of the state, driving each cooperative to keep rates as affordable as possible.

For all of these reasons, California electric cooperatives strive to do what is best for their members- and Golden State Power Cooperative strives to minimize the regulatory burden on each cooperative- so that each utility can provide quality services with affordable rates.